Horo­scopes

Aries (March 21-April 19): Those who think that cloth­ing doesn’t mat­ter much will think again. What you wear when you go out will play a key role in how you feel and who you are be­ing in the sit­u­a­tion. Taurus (April 20-May 20): Does it seem like other peo­ple’s opin­ions are get­ting heard more read­ily than yours? Rem­edy this. Speak up. Bring a bull­horn if you have to, but make your­self heard; it will ben­e­fit all. Gemini (May 21-June 21): You could love some­thing just be­cause some­one else loves it, and that will turn out to be as good a rea­son as any. Get­ting wrapped up in the spirit of things will be won­der­ful. Can­cer (June 22-July 22): There’s some­thing com­pli­cated in your per­sonal life that’s about to get much less so. All you have to do is see the truth and no­tice it. You don’t have to do any­thing about about it. Leo (July 23-Aug. 22): The love of your life may be a per­son, or it may be a fas­ci­na­tion. Ei­ther way, this great love will hold the lion’s share of your at­ten­tion this week­end. Part­ner­ing with a Libra in some way will be lucky. Virgo (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): You don’t like the feel­ing that some­one is check­ing your ev­ery move. How­ever, right now there’s some­thing nice about know­ing that there are those who are aware of you and “have your back.” Libra (Sept. 23-Oct. 23): Maybe you don’t care if your ef­forts get no­ticed or not; you’re act­ing purely to re­fine your char­ac­ter and ex­pand your heart as you go above and be­yond what is be­ing asked of you. Scorpio (Oct. 24-Nov. 21): This is a lucky day to make reser­va­tions, plan ahead, buy tick­ets and more. You’ll land the best seats, the cen­ter of the meat, the prime spot for so­cial­iz­ing with just the peo­ple who can help you the most. Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Ba­bies crawl be­fore they walk: It’s safer this way. From the hands and knees they don’t have as far to fall. Do your learn­ing in the or­der that strength­ens and builds your skills or­gan­i­cally. Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): If the clothes don’t fit or the sheets no longer stay on the bed, get rid of them. But if it’s just a bro­ken re­la­tion­ship — well, it’s quite pos­si­ble that can be mended with only a few words. And you’re in just the mood to try it, too. Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): As for the weeds in the gar­den of your so­cial life, these pesky crea­tures seem in­tent on caus­ing dis­or­der among your well-tended base. Ei­ther chalk it up to “na­ture” or up­root that which of­fends. Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20): There may be a sur­prise lim­i­ta­tion thrown your way, but this will ac­tu­ally prove to be an ad­van­tage. If you’re stuck be­tween a rock and a hard place, there’s nowhere to go but up.

To write to Hol­i­day Mathis, visit www.cre­ators.com/ author/hol­i­day-mathis and click “Con­tact.” DEAR ABBY >> I’m about to get cus­tody of my daugh­ter af­ter four years, so I’m a lit­tle out of the par­ent­ing eti­quette loop. A friend of mine has a daugh­ter, “Au­tumn,” who is an ab­so­lute ter­ror and a bully. The girl has been rude to my daugh­ter dur­ing the times she has vis­ited. I know I won’t be able to avoid so­cial func­tions be­cause Au­tumn’s fam­ily is al­ways in­vited to a mu­tual friend’s events. My daugh­ter wants noth­ing to do with her, and I don’t know how to eas­ily avoid play dates. Please ad­vise.

— Per­plexed in the West

DEAR PER­PLEXED >> Talk to Au­tumn’s par­ents about her be­hav­ior, so it can be cor­rected. If you are wor­ried about your daugh­ter hav­ing to in­ter­act with the girl, sug­gest that she so­cial­ize with the other chil­dren at the event and stay out of Au­tumn’s way. If the girl acts out against your daugh­ter, tell your child she is wel­come to come and spend some time with you. While you can’t com­pletely in­su­late her from un­pleas­ant peers, this may lessen the pain. DEAR ABBY >> I’m in high school, and I’m hav­ing some prob­lems with my friend “Dave.” I’m in ev­ery one of his classes, and he keeps com­ing to me and ask­ing if I want to work with him. I need to say no, but I don’t know how. It would be nice to work with other friends, but how do I tell that to Dave?

— Con­necti­cut sopho­more

DEAR SOPHO­MORE >> Be frank with your friend. All you have to say is: “Dave, I like work­ing with you — but I also want to work with other peo­ple. If we both work with some of the oth­ers, it will keep us sharper.” And if he in­di­cates that he’s tak­ing it as a per­sonal re­jec­tion, tell him it isn’t true — that you like him, but think it’s not smart for ei­ther of you to limit your­selves. (It’s the truth.)

DEAR ABBY >> I could use some ad­vice about fam­ily roles. Mine al­ways seems to be the peace­keeper and mediator. With­out go­ing into too much de­tail, my fam­ily has some is­sues, and they usu­ally vol­un­teer me to fix the prob­lem. It’s ex­tremely stress­ful, and I feel guilty when I don’t suc­ceed.

I am a travel nurse, and I ac­cepted an as­sign­ment across the coun­try to try to step back from it. Some of the drama fol­lows me here, but it’s noth­ing like when I was home. My guilt con­tin­ues be­cause I feel like my duty is to be with my fam­ily, es­pe­cially my sis­ter, who is emo­tion­ally co-de­pen­dent on me. Any ad­vice to help di­vide the roles?

— Over­whelmed in Phoenix

DEAR OVER­WHELMED >> Please stop feel­ing like you did some­thing wrong in tak­ing that as­sign­ment. You made the right choice. By do­ing it, you have gifted your fam­ily with the op­por­tu­nity to learn to deal with its is­sues with­out re­ly­ing ex­clu­sively on you. By now it should have dawned on YOU that you can­not fix your sis­ter’s co-de­pen­dency prob­lem. Only she can do that, if she’s will­ing to rec­og­nize that she has a prob­lem and ac­cept that a li­censed psy­chother­a­pist — and not her sis­ter — can pro­vide her with the tools to over­come it.

Dear Abby is writ­ten by Abi­gail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Con­tact Dear Abby at www.DearAbby.com or P.O. Box 69440, Los An­ge­les, CA 90069.